"My mother used to go shopping in New York with her cousin and one day the cousin said, 'We can't go shopping now Rose, we have to go to Brooklyn, we have something to do. There's a distant cousin of yours and mine. We have to ....' It turned out to be Ethel Rosenberg's mother. She was a very old lady at the time and she couldn't take care of the little boys. My mother loved children and she wanted to take the Rosenberg boys with her, to take care of them, but it didn't work out. My father objected because of money. They were adopted, though. One of the lawyers, I think. So I was always interested in Ethel Rosenberg."

Roy, the new play by award-winning playwright, fiction writer, and longtime San Francisco resident Joel Ensana, centers around the last days of the infamous gay Republican mover and shaker, Roy Cohn. Best known for the part he played in the Rosenbergs' execution and his role in the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, Cohn died in 1986 from opportunistic infections brought on by the AIDS virus. Vain, ruthless, and driven, he vehemently denied that he was gay and that he had AIDS. Until the very end, he clung to the desperate hope a cure would be found so he could resume his life of power, influence, and boys.

What first got you interested in Roy Cohn?

I was working on a musical in Los Angeles when the two books about Cohn came out. I really connected with him because we're about the same age and I also had to cover up. I was Jewish and gay. I couldn't get jobs, not only because I was gay but because I was Jewish.

But we're entirely different, too. I'm liberal and he was conservative Republican. He was extremely ambitious and he just really hated himself because he thought being gay got in the way of his being president or senator He was just a mess.

Then I thought, there's so much more here, not just Ethel Rosenberg and the McCarthy hearings, but it's about being gay now, coming out of the closet now. Roy Cohn really could have helped gays, being a big Republican and all, but at the end, when he died of AIDS, it was pathetic.

He was a pathetic character. I don't think he believed he was going to die. He figured that with all his money, something's going to happen. This medicine will work. This will be the miracle drug. He was a horrible person.

But if you're a nice person you're going to feel compassion for him. He's a victim of AIDS, just like so many other people are. Maybe some people, like I say in the play wished and prayed he'd die. There were people who hated him so much because he did ruin many lives in the McCarthy era. He used Ethel [Rosenberg]. That was his first big case. That's how he got on the McCarthy hearings. He used Ethel just like J. Edgar Hoover used Emma Goldman.

Did you have any first-hand experience of the anti-gay climate people like McCarthy and Cohn created?

I was in the Office of Intelligence in the Air Force. I lived in Tokyo for a year and a half and there were purges all the time. Word would get around. Two WACs were arrested. We had to lay low, so we wouldn't go to the bars for about a week or so. It was an awful feeling to be a second-class citizen. We were the hardest workers in that office and we had to watch every move we made. It makes you feel like crap.

What sources did you use? Did history conform nicely to a dramatic structure or did you have to embellish?

It easily fit, plus like I told you, Roy and I are about the same age. I went through all those periods with him, like the '70s—New York, Studio 54 and all that—and the McCarthy hearings. So it was kind of easy for me, this one was. I found I could get easily into his character. Being Jewish. I've written a lot of plays about the New York Jewish scene especially because I'm from back there. I'm from New Jersey.

As far as sources go, of course the book Citizen Cohn and the other books. Then I went to the library and did a lot of digging up. Esquire and Life had articles. I was living in the LA area for two years and I met a lot of people who knew Roy. There was this rich Jewish doctor who used to trade boys with him. Roy would say, "Oh, I have this boy" and he'd fly him out to this doctor.

I wanted to show he was a very sexual person. He loved sex, and he really didn't hide it that much. There were boys around him all the time. Barbara Walters saw these boys, Steinbrenner—they all saw the boys around but because he was Roy, they just put it out of their minds.

Have you encountered any legal problems with this play?

No I haven't. I was kind of hesitant about using Barbara Walters' name, but then a book came out, her biography. It mentions Roy all through it. How he helped her get the child. You know, the adoption. He used to date her in college. She was a wonderful friend to him. When she found but he had AIDS, she stood by him. I checked it all with a theater lawyer in LA and with the Dramatist Guild lawyer. And the part about the nurse in the hospital is all fiction. The historical part is just his dreams.

Let's talk about Roy's fictional nurse at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda. Jules is quite blunt and almost nasty to Roy, but at the end he breaks down and cries.

At first when I was writing this I thought the nurse was really the other side, what Roy should have been. Jules is also Jewish and gay, but he's liberal and he's more of a mensch, a human being, who understands and feels. He even feels for Roy Cohn at the end. He says, "You're family."

Sure, he's nasty to Roy some times but only because he wanted to speak out. He wanted to be heard. Jules is the one who does all the speech making about AIDS and gay politics. When he cries, I don't think he's crying for Roy. He says he's crying for all those other people. At the end of the play he's holding a man who has just died. You can't help being moved by death. I know when I lost my lover ... well, he was older than me, much older.

Death is so final. That's the end and that's it. Jules is a nurse and he sees it all the time, but every time I'm sure he cries. He's really not crying for Roy, although he probably saw deep down inside there's a little human being in Roy. Jules might be excusing him. If you're ambitious, if you want money, you'll stop at nothing. It's a kind of society where we all stop at nothing.

How would you describe the impact that AIDS has had on your writing?

I think I'm leaning more toward writing about gays now. Writing about the whole situation. Because I agree with the young people who say, "Silence Equals Death." I really do. Jews learned that a long time ago. That you can't be silent. People say, "Oh, we're tired of the Holocaust, we're tired about hearing about that." And it's true, but you can't let people forget because they'll just start it all over again.

I wanted the audience to feel compassion for all people with AIDS, but not just people with AIDS. I want them to see something bigger than Roy. Roy is just a person ... just a character, a complex character, but there's more to it. When I went to see Death of a Salesman at ACT with a friend, he broke down and cried. He was so depressed because that was his father ... Willy Loman was his father ... it all came back to him. That's what I think theater should be.